But it did not take that to satisfy her and some mornings Ginia would leave the house on her way to work just enjoying the walk. The other girls would say, ‘If I get back late, I find I’m sleepy next day’, or ‘If I get back late, they give me a beating’. But Ginia was never tired and her brother who was a night-worker, slept in the day-time and only saw her at supper. In the middle of the day – Severino turned over in bed when she came in – Ginia laid the table. She was always desperately hungry and chewed slowly, at the same time listening to all the household noises. As is usually the case in empty lodgings, there was no sense of urgency, and Ginia had time to wash up the dishes that waited for her in the sink, do a bit of tidying round, then lie down on the sofa under the window and let herself drowse off to the tick of the alarm-clock in the next room. Sometimes she would close the shutters so as to darken the room and feel more cut off. At three o’clock Rosa would go downstairs, pausing to scratch gently at her door so as not to disturb Severino until Ginia let her know she was awake. Then they would set off together, parting company at the tram.

The only things Ginia and Rosa had in common were that short stretch of street and the star of small pearls in their hair. But once when they were walking past a shop-window Rosa said, ‘We look like sisters’, and Ginia saw that the star looked cheap and realized that she ought to wear a hat if she didn’t want to be taken for a factory-girl; especially as Rosa who was still under her parents’ thumb wouldn’t be able to afford one for heaven knows how long.

On her way down to call her, Rosa came in unless it was getting too late, and Ginia let her help her tidy round, laughing silently at Severino who, like all men, had no idea what house-keeping involved. Rosa referred to him as ‘Your husband’, to keep up the joke, but quite often Ginia’s face would darken and she complained that having all the bother of a house without the husband to go with it was no fun. In point of fact she was not serious, for her pleasure lay precisely in running a house on her own just like a housewife, but she felt she must remind Rosa from time to time that they were no longer babes. Rosa, however, seemed incapable of behaving in a dignified manner even in the street; she pulled faces, laughed and turned round. Ginia could have smacked her. Yet when they went off to a dance together, Rosa was indispensable; with her easy, familiar ways and her high spirits, she made Ginia’s superiority plain to the rest of the company. In that wonderful year when they began living on their own account, Ginia had soon realized that what made her different from the others was having the house to herself – Severino didn’t count – and being able to live like a lady at her present age of sixteen. She let Rosa go around with her for the same reason that she wore the star in her hair, simply because it amused her. No one else in the district could be as crazy as Rosa when she wanted. She could pull everybody’s leg, laughing and tossing her head back, and some evenings she did nothing but fool the whole time. And she could be as awkward as an old hen. ‘What’s up, Rosa?’ someone remarked while they were waiting for the orchestra to start up. ‘I’m scared’ – and her eyes started out of her head – ‘behind there I saw an old man staring at me and waiting for me outside, I’m scared’. Her partner was not convinced, ‘He must be your grandfather, then!’ ‘Silly fool!’ ‘Let’s dance, come on!’ ‘No, I tell you, I’m frightened!’ Half-way round, Ginia heard Rosa’s partner shout, ‘You’re an ignorant little fool; run away and play. Go back to the factory!’ Then Rosa laughed and made everybody else laugh but as Ginia went on dancing she thought that the factory was just the sort of place for a girl like her. You had only to look at the mechanics who picked up acquaintance with them by fooling around in a similar manner.

If there was one of these around you could be quite sure that before the evening was out one of the girls would get mad or, if she was more hysterical, start weeping. They teased you just like Rosa. They were always trying to get you to go down to the meadows; it was no use talking to them, all of a sudden you had to be on the defensive. But they had their good points: some evenings they would sing and they could sing well, especially if Ferruccio came along with his guitar. He was a tall blond fellow always out of a job but his fingers were still black and rough from handling coal. It did not seem possible that those large hands could be so skilful and Ginia, who had once felt them under her armpits when they were all on their way back from the hills, carefully avoided looking at them while he was playing.